Stars of Tomorrow 2025: Anna Snowball (director)

”An outsider who is digging their heels in on a dream,” is what Basingstoke-born documentary filmmaker Anna Snowball looks for in subjects.

She came across just that while eating in an Iranian restaurant around a decade ago, finding Reza, an Iranian man trying to build a new life in London through his soup business. He is the subject of Iranian Yellow Pages, her Netflix Documentary Talent Fund-winning short that premiered at BFI London Film Festival in 2024, also earning a nod at the Grierson Awards.

Snowball is now working on her first feature Inside Is Chaos, sifting through “a hard drive of footage I know is really amazing” of a friend she met while volunteering in Brazil. She started filming the friend’s journey through motherhood in 2016, with both parent and child receiving autism diagnoses. Julia Ton (Grand Theft Hamlet) is producing.

While researching presentations of neurodiversity in women, Snowball realised, “Oh right, that’s me.” This recognition, she says, has helped her creative process. “It’s been good to find out how my brain works.”

Snowball is a 2014 graduate of the NFTS directing documentary MA and has helmed non-fiction short-form work for Channel 4, BBC and Arte, as well as branded content for the likes of the British Red Cross. She is, however, resolute that cinema is where she wants her films to be seen.

“Someone is giving you access to tell their story and you’ve built that trusting relationship, you can do anything. Why not tell it in the strongest possible way? It should be cinematic.”

Snowball is not ruling out a move into scripted, so long as it feels like a “natural progression of what I’m doing now, which is seeing how much you can elevate a story”.

Contact: Anna Snowball 

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